Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/14

 which no one acquainted with China will dispute. The educated European is versed only in the ancient and modern history of the continent to which he belongs, and in that of Western Asia. The rise and fall of the Greek and Roman powers; the development of their intellectual life; the varying fortunes of their component states; the prowess of their commanders; the writings of their dramatists and poets, and the speculations of their philosophers: all these are familiar enough, in a general way, to the well-read gentleman of Europe. But does it ever enter his consciousness that Greece may not be the only land which ever produced a Plato or a Sophocles; that other worlds than that he is so well acquainted with may lie beyond the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus, the literatures of which present a treasure-house of instruction and delight, to which he may have access if he will; that Europe has not monopolised the statesmen and the warriors, the poets and reformers, the men of mark and women of command who have hitherto appeared among the nations of the earth; that deeds of heroism and daring, scenes of voluptuousness and revelry, triumphs of intellect and skill, brilliant campaigns and hard-won victories, revolutions, restorations, and reforms—all the phenomena, in a word, of national and social life—have signalised the history of a giant land whose past is shrouded in obscurity, and whose present is substantially ignored? Hardly; or, if such a speculation were to cross his mind, he would dismiss it as treating of persons and events as far removed from his sphere of being as if they belonged to another planet than our own. It is this apathy and this ignorance which future years will, we hope, dispel.